Right There All the Time, Part 4

He had thought that maybe things would change after they’d talked. He’d thought that self-awareness would make Emma more hesitant or awkward, or that she’d go completely the other way and actually man up—woman up?—and do something about what she knew, but it didn’t pan out like that.

When Mom got back from her meeting, they had a late supper together in the kitchen, just hot chocolate for Emma and him, but soup and bread for Mom because Emma insisted that she eat something substantial. Mom talked about work while Emma listened in a totally normal Emma way and it was like nothing had changed at all.

Date Night was just like any other Date Night. When he came home, they were talking and drinking and laughing and being all up in each other. The only difference was that Emma came out of the living room to talk to him almost before he had time to take off his coat and shoes. She asked how the rehearsals had gone, but he knew what she was actually doing was making sure that he didn’t say or do something to push the Revelations of the Big Book of Gay at either of them.

Friday morning, Emma made fried eggs and Special Mom Frittata and a weak joke about Mom’s age, and there were kisses on the top of his head for him and a kiss on the cheek for Emma. Emma had her Dopey Adoring Face and Mom was still giving out Totally Married Touches, and Emma didn’t flinch away or get all weird or anything. Of course, Emma couldn’t really be more awkward around Mom, because her default state was agitated awe, like Mom couldn’t possibly be real and right there next to her, wanting to be around her, which was pretty much how Mom was with Emma, too, and he still didn’t get how they could both be ignoring all of this.

The weekend was the weekend. Emma wasn’t working on Saturday because it was Will’s turn to pull the double shift, and the three of them went grocery shopping together. Mom was surprised that he wanted to come along, but Emma knew the real reason was that he was still watching them, waiting for some sign that Mom had Figured It All Out. As they entered the store, she put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing way too tight, and said, “Behave, kid.” And he did behave, not doing or saying anything untoward. He watched Emma try to sneak a variety of high-fat and high-sugar things into the cart and watched Mom waiting until Emma’s back was turned to take some but not all of them back out again (because there were two types of junk food in their house: stuff they definitely weren’t supposed to have and stuff Mom pretended to let them get away with, even though she’d have bought it for them anyway).

On Sunday, they had a picnic at the park with Grandpa and Uncle Neal, just like always, but he saw the first sign that he’d been wrong, and that Emma had changed. She had developed a new look. Had he still been keeping his notebook, he would have called it Thoughtful Adoring Face. It was only imperceptibly different from Dopey Adoring Face in that there was the exact same amount of love in her gaze, but it was clear that Emma was trying to read Mom rather than just staring at her like a puppy hoping to be petted. He didn’t know if Emma could see something that he couldn’t, because Mom didn’t seem different to him at all. Part of him thought that maybe that was what Emma wanted, though: for Mom not to notice, so that things didn’t have to change. But she was definitely looking for something.

And so it continued, as days became weeks. He talked to Grace about it, but all she gave him was the cliché about leading a horse to water but not being able to make it drink, and that wasn’t helpful at all because Making the Horse Drink was the very thing he needed advice on. And he didn’t have anyone else to talk to because Emma wouldn’t even discuss it. As soon as he raised it, she cut him off with a warning or a weary look, or by huffing and walking away, shaking her head.

The only time she said anything was when they met Mom after work one day to go to Granny’s for a burger and fries as a treat for his getting a good grade on his science project. Emma caught him staring a bit too hard and gave him a particularly harsh glare, leaning behind Mom to make a cutting motion across her neck. As soon as Mom excused herself to go to the restroom, the smile slipped from Emma’s face and she scowled at him, leaning across the booth so that she could talk in a low tone.

“You have to drop this,” she said.

He still couldn’t believe that she was being like this. “But how can I pretend that I don’t know what I know? How do you?”

“I’m not pretending about anything. This thing, this life with you and your mom, this is the real deal for me. Stop trying to make it something it isn’t.”

He wanted to bang his head off the table because this shouldn’t be where they were with everything. What had been the point of an Official Dossier if no-one but him—and Grace, definitely Grace, who had laughed out loud at some of his notations, which was good because he’d heard that girls liked boys who made them laugh—took it seriously?

“I’m not trying to make it anything it isn’t,” he said. “I’m only trying to get you to admit what it actually is. Don’t you think Mom deserves to know how you feel about her so that she can make her own decisions?”

Emma looked guilty or at least thoughtful about that for a moment, then she shook her head. “I’m not hiding anything from her.”

“But you’re not telling her the whole truth.”

“If she asks me, I won’t lie.” She checked over her shoulder for any sign of Mom reappearing. “Anyway, now’s not the time to talk about this.”

“That’s what you’re going with?” He was so disappointed in Emma, because she was supposed to the brave and reckless one. Maybe he should have told Mom first instead.

“I’m warning you. You’re skating on thin ice, kid.”

Life really wasn’t fair.

+

He didn’t think much of it when the phone rang one Tuesday evening. Emma wasn’t home, but she’d texted earlier to say she would be late, so his first thought was that it was probably just her letting Mom know that she’d be a while yet.

“Henry! Downstairs! Now!” Mom shouted. Mom didn’t shout often, even when she was really, really mad, so it definitely wasn’t something good. He threw himself off his bed and hurried down the stairs, where he found Mom pulling on her coat.

“What’s wrong?”

“That was Deputy Scarlet on the phone. Your mother has been taken to hospital,” Mom said, her hands shaking as she ran her fingers through her hair.

“Will she be okay?”

“She’d better be, if she knows what’s good for her.” She shook her head. “Get your coat and boots on.”

He did as he was told while Mom called his grandparents on her cellphone, telling them that Emma had been in an accident and had a concussion, and that she’d let them know what was happening as soon as she knew herself.

Mom’s hands were still trembling as she locked the front door, and as she opened the car door, and as she grasped the steering wheel, although she tried to hide her worry from him by giving him a tight smile and saying, “What are we going to do with her, eh?”

“What actually happened?”

“She fell out of a tree while rescuing a stupid cat, and she landed on her head.” Mom gave a shaky, high-pitched laugh which sounded so very wrong that it made his skin crawl. “Maybe it will have knocked some sense into her.”

They didn’t say anything else on the drive to the Emergency Room. Mom drove over several corners, right up onto the sidewalk, and came perilously close to totalling Mr Tell’s mailbox, clipping it and leaving it at an unstable angle. She didn’t even lock the car in her haste to get inside the hospital, where they were met by Will Scarlet.

“Where is she?” Mom asked, rushing past him to get to the front desk.

“She’s waiting for something called a CT, I think,” Will said, rubbing his hands together and cracking his knuckles. “They were going to call you, but I said I’d do it.” He nodded his head towards the examination rooms. “I’ll take you to her.”

“But don’t I have to sign something official to—” Mom looked forlorn, as if she needed the reassurance of filling out some medical forms to make everything manageable.

“It’s fine.” Will walked over and put his arm round her shoulders. “She’ll be fine.” He started to usher Mom across the foyer. “Come, young Henry.”

He followed behind them, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be there. He hated hospitals, and he knew that Emma hated hospitals, and he tried to push down the thought that something might be really wrong. He’d had a hotdog for lunch at school, and he could taste both that and the sharp tang of acid at the back of his throat. As if sensing his fear, Mom reached her hand back for him, and he took it, but her hand was as clammy as his own, and it didn’t help the way it usually did.

“She’s mostly okay, they think, just cuts and bruises and a bump on the head,” Will said, as Mom shrugged from his loose hold on her shoulders. She sped up, tugging Henry along with her.

Emma was in the four-bedded bay which passed for a combination Emergency Room and observation area. At the sound of Mom’s heels, she scrambled to sit up, but the nurse who was cleaning her wounds pushed her back down.

“Emma!” Mom’s grip on his hand tightened so hard that his fingers ached, but that was okay, because Emma was okay. She had some butterfly stitches on her forehead and scrapes across her face and chin. There was blood all over her shoulder and down her arm. The heels of her hands were scraped as well, and she had a deep cut on her right inside forearm from which the nurse was removing stones or glass or something.

“Hey, Regina,” she said, trying for a sheepish smile.

Mom ignored her and glared at the nurse, who put down the tweezers she’d been using and swallowed hard. He didn’t blame her, because Mom was pretty intimidating at the best of times. This was not the best of times. Emma looked between the nurse and Mom, and she swallowed, too.

“How is she, Nurse Mbele?” Mom asked, and the nurse’s eyes skittered around, no doubt hoping that someone would come rescue her from the irate Mayor in front of her. Henry thought she might have been one of the nurses who looked after Grandpa when he was in his coma but he wasn’t sure. Back then, he’d had other things on his mind. When her eyes flicked to him, Henry gave her a nod and a smile, trying to reassure her that Mom wasn’t as frightening as she seemed: she was just frightened about Emma.

Nurse Mbele explained to Mom that Emma had been unconscious when brought in, but had regained consciousness quite quickly. As she talked through the examination of Emma so far, Henry slipped his hand from Mom’s, giving it a squeeze as he did so, and he moved to the near side of Emma’s bed. Emma reached out and stroked her thumb across his palm, but she was looking straight at Mom.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, it takes a lot more than a short fall out of an old tree to get rid of me.” Emma said it loud enough for Mom to hear, but Mom just shook her head and pulled Nurse Mbele further aside to look over Emma’s chart. “How much trouble am I in?”

“She hit Mr Tell’s mailbox and nearly crashed, like, five times on the way here.”

“So, big trouble, then?”

“Probably.” Mom had a tendency to lash out when she got scared, so there was a good chance that Emma was going to be on the serious end of an epic telling-off. But Mom was also giving Really Worried Glances in Emma’s direction, so it was hard to tell how she’d react.

Will came to the bedside. “Now that your family’s here, I’m going to head back to the station, Boss,” he said.

“Thanks for everything,” Emma said. “We can catch up tomorrow.”

“You honestly think Mrs Sheriff’s going to let you come in to work?” he asked.

Emma grimaced. “Maybe not. Either way, I’ll call the station.”

As soon as Will left, Henry shook his head at his stupid, idiotic mother. “Mrs Sheriff?”

“Oh, that.” Emma rolled her eyes. “See, when Will first came to town, Snow told him that she was married to the sheriff, and Will mistakenly thought she meant me. Then, when he started working as a Deputy, we were joking about it one day, and he said your mom made a much better Mrs Sheriff for me anyway and the name just sort of stuck, and—” She broke off and rubbed her forehead with her good hand. “And I am such an idiot for not seeing this earlier, aren’t I?”

He found a bit of Emma’s arm which wasn’t either bruised or scraped and patted it as gently as he could.

+

Everything after that was tense and uncomfortable. Mom point-blank refused to talk to Emma except monosyllabic answers when Emma’s badgering got too much for her. Mom did her best to bully Nurse Mbele and the CT techs into giving her answers that they didn’t have. The fact that they mostly responded to her with sympathy and understanding made her angrier and angrier. The vein in her head was twitching almost constantly, but the Secret Worried Looks of Love she kept giving Emma didn’t stop.

While they were waiting for the results of the CT, Grandpa appeared with drinks and sandwiches for everyone from Granny’s, and his presence seemed to calm Mom for the first time since Will had called their house. She even ate a few bites of her sandwich and smiled when Grandpa joked that Charmings were known for having exceptionally hard heads. At one point, Grandpa pulled Mom aside, and they disappeared for ten minutes or so. When they returned, Mom was clutching a cotton handkerchief, and Grandpa was carrying a tray of coffees, but his other hand was on her shoulder. Henry only saw it because he was at the foot of Emma’s bed. He also saw Grandpa taking the handkerchief from Mom and slipping it into his pocket, for which Mom gave him a grateful nod.

It was late, long past his weeknight bedtime, when Dr Farmer, the evening attending, came to say that Emma was fine and could go home in the morning after a night’s observation. Mom went ballistic. Henry felt sorry for the doctor, who was only trying to do her job, but Mom’s very loud insistence that Emma was coming home right that second resulted in Emma’s Trembling Lip of Appreciation, so he couldn’t get too bothered about it. Mom won the fight apparently, because pretty soon Emma was discharged and he was back in Mom’s car and Emma was in Grandpa’s truck.

Mom didn’t talk on the car ride home any more than she had on the way there, and she gripped the steering wheel too tight again, and she was grinding her teeth non-stop, but they didn’t hit anything, solid or otherwise, so there was that. As soon as she’d parked the Mercedes, she stormed into the house, so Henry went over to help Grandpa to get Emma out of his truck. This task was made more difficult by Emma’s insistence that she could do it herself, which promptly ended with her half-strangling herself by trying to get down from the bench seat without first removing her seatbelt. She agreed to an arm around each of their shoulders, but claimed it was purely to make them feel manly and not because she needed it at all.

By the time they reached the foyer, Mom was coming down the stairs. The sleeves of her blouse were rolled up to her elbows, and she seemed calmer, less angry.

“I’ve started running a bath,” she said. “David, can you help Emma upstairs?”

“I’m fine,” Emma said, even though she was swaying on her feet and the arm she had around Henry’s shoulders was tired and heavy.

“David?” Mom said, and maybe she wasn’t less angry at all, because she still wouldn’t even look at Emma.

“Where to?” Grandpa asked.

“Master bedroom. Sit her on the bed and I’ll be there shortly.” Mom was already heading towards the kitchen. Grandpa adjusted his hold on Emma, then leaned down to pick her up bridal-style.

“Dad, I don’t need carried.” She leaned her head on his shoulder anyway.

“Of course you don’t. But sometimes Dads need to feel like their little girls need them, so maybe just give me this, huh?” He kissed the top of Emma’s head, ignoring her sleepy grumbling about being a grown-ass woman and not a little girl, and turned to Henry. “You should go check on your mom.”

In the kitchen, Mom was leaning her forehead against the fridge door, her arms wrapped around her waist. Wordlessly, he pressed against her back and hugged her from behind, squeezing his eyes shut and finding Mom’s hands with his own.

“Oh, Henry, sweetheart, it’s okay,” she said, threading her fingers through his. “Emma’s going to be quite all right.”

A part of him cringed that Mom would think he was worried about Emma, not her. She let go of his hands and turned around in his arms, cupping his cheek and giving him the best kind of Mom smile, the one where she looked like she might burst from loving so much.

“You have nothing to fear. Your mother is somewhat indestructible.” She was trying to sound irritated by Emma’s behaviour, but she failed. All Henry could hear was that his Mom was desperate to believe that Emma really was indestructible.

“You’re not, though.” He pulled her to him, burying his face in her neck. Sometimes, she felt so tiny against him, but her hugs still made him feel like she could protect him from the whole world. He hugged harder, and hoped that some of that feeling could pass from him to her.

“Of course I am. And anyone who tells you different is a liar and a fool.” She cradled the back of his head with one hand, rubbing up and down his back with the other.

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too. So, so much.” She pressed him back by the shoulders and smiled at him. Her eyes were glistening, and he wished that he carried a handkerchief like Grandpa did. “Shall we go check that your grandfather hasn’t dropped your mother on her head again?”

+

Upstairs, Grandpa was standing with his arms folded, while Emma lay back on Mom’s bed, talking to Grandma on the landline. Grandpa had removed Emma’s boots and socks, leaving her in her jeans and the hospital gown she’d worn home because Mom wouldn’t let her put her bloodstained Henley back on.

With her usual bossy efficiency, Mom took the phone from Emma and said goodbye to Grandma, promising to call again in the morning; herded Emma into the bathroom and told her to wait until she returned; positioned Henry at the bathroom door with orders to keep Emma talking, because it was really important that she stay awake; and ushered Grandpa towards the stairs to escort him to the front door and say goodbye.

She scooted him out of the room as soon as she came back, kissing him on the forehead and promising to come say goodnight once she got Emma settled.

He closed the bedroom door on his way out, but stayed in the hallway, pressing his ear to the wall.

“Are you still angry at me?” he heard Emma say.

“I wasn’t angry at you at all, Emma,” Mom said. “Now, stop talking and get out of those clothes and into the bath.”

“But you’re not talking to me.”

“We’re talking now.”

“You know what I mean, Regina. Shout at me if you want to, but say something, anything. I can’t take this silent treatment from you. It’s seriously freaking me out.”

“Get undressed. I’ll be out here if you need a hand.”

“I’m sorry if I scared you.”

There was a long pause before Mom said, “I know.”

He waited a few more moments, but all he heard was the water running and Mom moving about the bedroom. He gave up and went to bed.

+

When he woke up, he was disoriented. He must have fallen asleep waiting for Mom. She’d obviously been into his room at some point, though, because she’d turned off the lights, put his vintage X-Men book over on his desk and covered him with a spare blanket they kept in the hall closet. Peering at the clock, he saw it was after 2am.

He rubbed his belly, feeling both hungry and thirsty. He didn’t think Mom would mind if he had milk and cookies, seeing as his only dinner had been the sandwiches that Grandpa had brought to the hospital. As he padded out of his room, careful not to step on the third floorboard, the one which squeaked and groaned and always gave him away, he noticed that Mom’s bedroom door was open. Soft light was spilling out into the hall.

The standing rule with both of his mothers was that he had to knock if their bedroom doors were closed, but was allowed in if the doors were open. (And both rooms were completely off-limits when they weren’t home, a rule which Emma had promised him was punishable by removal of all of the bathroom locks in the house, and she’d given him that special stare of You Know What I Mean. He’d known exactly what she meant.) He hardly went into Mom’s room even when she was there, though, because it felt weird now that he wasn’t a little kid. It was her personal space, and he understood that. But she never left the door open at night, and it wasn’t a normal night, so he figured a quick peek wouldn’t get him in too much trouble. He was allowed to be concerned about them, after all.

He moved as slowly as possible, aware that any sound at all was magnified in the silence of the rest of the house. He planted his feet apart in front of the door to distribute his weight, and leaned only his upper body far enough to look inside.

Mom was fast asleep, sitting up in bed, her back against the headboard. She was still wearing the clothes she’d had on all day, although she’d removed her shoes and her blouse was askew where Emma’s hand was grasping it. Emma was also asleep, her head in Mom’s lap and her body curled around Mom’s legs. From what he could see, the scrapes on Emma’s arms and face were gone, but she still had the butterfly stitches on her forehead. Mom’s hand was tangled loosely in Emma’s hair, and Henry guessed that she’d been stroking from Emma’s neck to the crown of her head, because that was what Mom used to do for him when he had a sore head. He remembered Mom teling him that magical healing of the brain was only to be attempted in the most dire circumstances, but he also knew that Mom’s regular touch could work wonders, too.

This definitely wasn’t something he was supposed to see, so he pulled the door over and went to get his snack.

+

When he came downstairs the next morning, his mothers were in the kitchen and bickering away like the tension of the previous evening had never happened. As Will had guessed, Mom had already decided that Emma wasn’t going in to work, and Emma was complaining about having to take a day off and not needing Grandpa and Will to babysit her, while Mom was arguing back that checking in on her once an hour was hardly babysitting.

Mom was dressed for work, which meant that his chances of scoring a family day off school were remote at best. On the up side, she was making pancakes. Henry took his seat next to Emma and asked how she was feeling. She told him that Mom had healed all her cuts and bruises, except the one on her head, and that she felt well enough to go to work. Mom just snorted.

If he hadn’t known that Emma had spent the night in Mom’s room, he’d never have guessed, because neither of them mentioned it. It wasn’t like they made it seem specifically otherwise, just that neither of them directly referred to it. Like, when Mom said that Emma was really hard to wake up for her hourly checks, she phrased it in such a way that Emma’s location at the time of those checks wasn’t referenced. Even when Emma said that Mom was a really good nurse and that she’d slept better than she had in ages, an admission which was accompanied by a Shared Private Smile, it wasn’t obvious where Emma had slept.

He didn’t even get a chance to hang back and grill Emma about what had happened after he’d been sent to bed, because Mom offered to give him a ride to school and he couldn’t think of a good reason to say no. His disappointment at that was almost immediately cancelled out by what happened next.

If he still had the Big Book of Gay (which he didn’t because Emma had confiscated it in case he was tempted to share it with Mom), it would have needed a whole page to itself. And it would have been written in block caps, two lines high. Maybe three. Probably in red pen for good measure.

Emma walked them to the front door, where she let Mom tell her again for at least the fifth time that she would be checking with both Will and Grandpa that Emma was letting them into the house to check on her. Henry stood on the front step, shaking his head at Mom’s over-protectiveness while Emma grinned at him over Mom’s shoulder.

“I will be fine. I am fine.” Emma held her arms out. “Look, you healed me, and the doc said I don’t have a concussion, so there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t tell me what to worry about. You are not the boss of me, Emma Swan.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It is totally the other way around.” She was so whipped, it wasn’t funny.

“And you’ll let me know right away if you feel even slightly faint?” Mom was leaning in towards Emma just as Emma was tilting her head for the expected kiss on the cheek.

“Uh-huh.” Emma rolled her eyes.

But then Mom stopped and pulled back. Her hand, hovering just over Emma’s hip, where she always rested it when she kissed Emma goodbye, came up to cup Emma’s chin.

“Don’t be sorry. Just be safe.” Mom’s thumb was rubbing over Emma’s lower lip, and Emma was still nodding, no longer joking, her mouth falling open a little further. “Don’t be stupid and go out, when the doctor’s orders are to rest for a full twenty-four hours. Don’t be you. Just stay here and let us take care of you.”

Mom removed her hand, which Emma watched with a furrowed brow, as if she couldn’t understand why Mom had stopped touching her.

And then—ALL CAPS and in red ink, double underlined—Mom leaned forward and kissed Emma on the lips.

The kiss didn’t last any longer than most of their regular Married Couple Kisses, but the way Mom pulled back, her eyes focusing on Emma’s mouth, like maybe she’d like to lean back in and do that again, was OMFG Totally Serious.

They just looked at each other for a few more seconds, and then Mom said, “I’ll come home at lunchtime and make you something special.”

It was said almost casually, and maybe Henry could have believed that Mom wasn’t really aware of what she had just done, like she wasn’t aware when she kissed Emma every other morning, but then she reached up and wiped her lipstick from Emma’s lips, and no-one ever needed to wipe lipstick off anyone quite so slowly or so thoroughly and what had he been thinking when he wanted this for his mothers?

Emma was clutching the door in her hand, and nodding again, like Mom was asking her a question to which ‘yes’ was the answer. Maybe his moms could speak a secret, silent language that he didn’t understand, because Mom nodded as well, stepping back from Emma but not breaking eye contact.

Then Mom reached out her hand for his shoulder and missed, because she still wasn’t paying attention to anything that wasn’t Emma, and that snapped her out of her daze.

“So, I’ll see you in a few hours, then,” she said to Emma in a voice which was almost like normal.

Emma didn’t say anything, just blinked.

This time when Mom reached for his shoulder, she found it and turned him in the direction of the Mercedes. As they walked towards the car, she asked him what he had planned for the day, but she kept looking back over her shoulder at Emma, who was still standing in the doorway, nodding.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if Emma was still standing there in shock when Grandpa came to visit her at ten o’clock.

2 Comments

How do I begin to express my love for this story? It’s just so full of wit and humour and little sneaky bombs of pure slapstick, not to mention a little high drama in this chapter along with all those moments of pure ‘totally married’ love that just ooze from the page/screen. A highlight for me was Emma “half-strangling herself by trying to get down from the bench seat without first removing her seatbelt.” Pure comedy gold (a glorious moment of pure awkward bumbling eager puppiness). But the final paragraphs, with Regina’s kiss to Emma’s lips and slow sultry wiping off of her lipstick? OMG. Emma wasn’t the only one doing a dazed blink at that point. Please tell me Regina is nowhere near as oblivious as Emma was, and that this is the start of a slow sweet seduction? Or a quick one? Just any kind really.

Ohhh man. I’m hooked and antsy for the next piece of this guy. I’m having fun hypothesizing about exactly what’s going on in Regina’s mind. Does she actually know exactly what she’s doing and has all along? Or did the “mishap” knock some sense into HER? Either way, I know that whatever you write will be better than anything I can dream up in my mind. Looking forward to more. Thanks :)